Famous Stories Every Child Should Know eBook

“The next morning we found she had done herself
no harm; and I asked her who were her parents, and
what had brought her here; but she gave me a strange,
confused answer. I am sure she must have been
born far away, for these fifteen years have we kept
her, without ever finding out where she came from;
and besides, she is apt to let drop such marvellous
things in her talk, that you might think she had lived
in the moon. She will speak of golden castles,
of crystal roofs, and I can’t tell what beside.
The only thing she has told us clearly, is, that as
she was sailing on the lake with her mother, she fell
into the water, and when she recovered her senses
found herself lying under these trees, in safety and
comfort, upon our pretty shore.

“So now we had a serious, anxious charge thrown
upon us. To keep and bring up the foundling,
instead of our poor drowned child—­that
was soon resolved upon but who should tell us if she
had yet been baptised or no? She knew how not
how to answer the question. That she was one
of God’s creatures, made for His glory and service,
that much she knew; and anything that would glorify
and please Him, she was willing to have done.
So my wife and I said to each other: ’If
she has never been baptised, there is no doubt it
should be done; and if she was, better do too much
than too little, in a matter of such consequence.’
We therefore began to seek a good name for the child.
Dorothea seemed to us the best; for I had once heard
that meant God’s gift; and she had indeed been
sent us by Him as a special blessing, to comfort us
in our misery. But she would not hear of that
name. She said Undine was what her parents used
to call her, and Undine she would still be. That,
I thought, sounded like a heathen name, and occurred
in no Calendar; and I took counsel with a priest in
the town about it. He also objected to the name
Undine; and at my earnest request, came home with
me, through the dark forest, in order to baptise her.
The little creature stood before us, looking so gay
and charming in her holiday clothes, that the priest’s
heart warmed toward her; and what with coaxing and
wilfulness, she got the better of him, so that he
clean forgot all the objections he had thought of to
the name Undine. She was therefore so christened
and behaved particularly well and decently during
the sacred rite, wild and unruly as she had always
been before. For, what my wife said just now was
too true—­we have indeed found her the wildest
little fairy! If I were to tell you all—­”

Here the Knight interrupted the Fisherman, to call
his attention to a sound of roaring waters, which
he had noticed already in the pauses of the old man’s
speech, and which now rose in fury as it rushed past
the windows. They both ran to the door.
By the light of the newly risen moon, they saw the
brook which gushed out of the forest breaking wildly
over its banks, and whirling along stones and branches
in its eddying course. A storm, as if awakened